A Best Practice That Tastes a Lot Like SPAM

Our real estate team just had a web expert complete an audit of our site. There were many excellent recommendations that came out of the audit, but the recommendation to “force registration” left a bad taste in my mouth. By “forcing registration”, the auditor is recommending we require people to give up their name, phone number and email address in order to view a property listing on our site.

It was explained in the audit that forced registration is an industry best practice - because it generates “more leads”. I disagree with this practice on a number of levels, but my biggest objection is forced registration just smells and tastes spammy to me.

More Leads Does Not Equal More Trust

Sure, forcing registration is an easy way to “get more leads”. It’s also a great way to erode trust. Aren’t we all in the business of earning trust in the first place? Why are so many agents taught to “chase down leads” instead of working to “attract future clients”? We’ll dig into this topic in a future post.